A POINT OF PERSONAL PRIVILEGE: The Cost of Doing Nothing, Repeatedly

Nothing brings people together like a shared dislike of potholes, and a shared suspicion that whoever’s supposed to fix them is doing it wrong.

You can be a logger, a latte-sipper, a libertarian farmer, or a left-wing cyclist and still nod grimly when someone mutters, “ODOT needs more money.”

Last week, I wrote about the proposed six-cent gas tax and how it’s designed not to build anything new, but simply to stop the bleeding in our transportation system. Some of you appreciated the explanation. Others made it clear you’d rather eat gravel than pay one more cent at the pump.

Fair enough. Let’s go deeper.

Because the problem isn’t just the gas tax. Or ODOT. Or consultants. Or even politics.

The problem is the whole system: a Frankenstein of outdated revenue models, rigid formulas, and reflexive borrowing that guarantees we spend more patching holes in our budgets than filling the ones in the asphalt.

Let’s talk about how we got here, and what it would take to get out.

 

The $1.1 Billion Miss That Wasn’t a Mistake

Late last year, ODOT realized it had overestimated its available cash flow by $1.1 billion. That’s not a rounding error. That’s not a technicality. That’s a “pull-the-emergency-brake” moment.

So what happened? Was it fraud? Some consultant buying a second yacht?

No. It was worse. It was business as usual.

Because the truth is, this wasn’t a failure of oversight. It was a symptom of the way we’ve structured the entire system: start now, pay later, explain never.

Welcome to the Doom Loop

Here’s how it works:

Step 1: The Legislature greenlights a major capital project.
Step 2: ODOT starts work, borrowing short-term if necessary.
Step 3: Costs increase (because they always do).
Step 4: We raid the maintenance budget to plug the gap.
Step 5: Eventually, we issue bonds to finish the project.
Step 6: To qualify for those bonds, we raise fees or taxes.
Step 7: Meanwhile, the maintenance budget never recovers.
Step 8: ODOT asks for help again.

Wash. Rinse. Repeat.

That’s how we end up with gleaming new freeway interchanges and snowplows that sit idle because the staff got laid off.

It’s Not That We Can’t Prioritize, It’s That We Already Did

Oregon doesn’t start megaprojects on a whim. We start them because they were promised, years ago, when fuel tax revenue looked more stable and inflation wasn’t eating our lunch.

But here’s the catch: once a project is named in a transportation package, it’s hard to un-name it. Even when the full funding isn’t available, we break ground. We use short-term loans. Then, in future legislative sessions, we redirect money to backfill those costs. Essentially spending tomorrow’s dollars on yesterday’s promises.

That wouldn’t be a problem, if Oregon had unlimited revenue.

But we don’t.

The total pot of money available for transportation is limited. So every dollar that goes toward capital projects means one less dollar is available to fund maintenance.

That’s not corruption. That’s how the system was designed. And that’s how we got here: not because we forgot about maintenance, but because we keep choosing other priorities first.

And the only way out of this cycle? We need enough revenue to fund all of it. That means maintenance, overruns, bond obligations, and yes, future projects.

Until we face that, we’re just rearranging gravel.

What If We’d Just Kept Up with Inflation?

Let’s talk about the gas tax.

Oregon’s current rate is 40 cents per gallon. But it hasn’t been indexed to inflation. Ever. If it had been, it would be around 55 cents today.

That gap didn’t open overnight. It widened slowly, year after year, as costs rose and the tax stood still. We didn’t lose 15 cents all at once. We lost a penny here, another there. Until one day we looked up and realized the road budget hadn’t just fallen behind. It had cratered.

And while we can’t pinpoint the exact total without year-by-year fuel consumption, we know the trajectory: less revenue, higher costs, deeper holes. Literally.

Twenty-four states have already indexed their gas taxes. Oregon didn’t. And that decision—that quiet, seemingly responsible decision to do nothing—now costs us hundreds of millions annually. Not in theory. In paint, gravel, labor, and the growing backlog of projects we’ll never get ahead of at this rate.

This isn’t ideology. It’s inertia. And it’s expensive.

And No, The Truckers Aren’t the Problem

Whenever the gas tax comes up, someone inevitably says: “Why not make the trucks pay more?”

It’s an understandable reaction. Trucks are big. They’re heavy. They look like they’re doing the damage. But here’s what the numbers actually say:

According to Oregon’s latest Highway Cost Allocation Study, heavy trucks are responsible for about 27% of road costs, but they’re paying 36% of the revenue. Meanwhile, passenger vehicles (yours and mine) are underpaying by more than 12%.

In other words, the people driving freight across the state, delivering your groceries, hauling your lumber, stocking your store shelves—they’re already picking up more than their share of the tab. And if we keep squeezing them, we’re not shifting the cost. We’re just passing it on: to the price of milk, the cost of plywood, the availability of local jobs.

More than that, it’s a question of fairness.

Oregon’s Constitution doesn’t just allow us to charge road users. It requires that we do it fairly, which means in proportion to how much they use the system and how much wear they cause. Not based on how frustrated we feel, or who’s the easiest to vilify.

We can’t fix a structural funding gap by scapegoating the people who are already overpaying. It might feel good politically, but it won’t hold up legally, and it won’t get our roads repaved.

The truth is, if we want a functioning transportation system, we can’t keep looking for someone else to carry the weight. The trucks are already doing that. Literally and financially.

Gas Tax as Collateral

And here’s what most people miss: that six-cent gas tax? It’s not just about today’s potholes. It’s about tomorrow’s funding.

Oregon needs to prove to bondholders that it has stable, long-term revenue to qualify for infrastructure loans. If we can’t show that (if our income projections look shaky) then we don’t get the loans. And if we don’t get the loans, we can’t finish the projects we’ve already started.

This is how we end up with half-built bridges and no crews to maintain them. This is how the six cents becomes the difference between functional and failure.

This is why that six-cent increase matters. It’s not about the gas. It’s about finally getting ahead of the cycle, so we stop making promises we can’t afford and start repairing the system we already have.

If It Passes: Breathing Room. If It Fails: Iceberg.

Let’s be clear: the gas tax increase won’t fix everything. But it will help prevent layoffs. It will keep plows on the road. It will qualify us for matching funds. And it will buy us time. Time to finally deal with the structural problems we’ve ignored for too long.

If it fails, the doom loop accelerates. Maintenance falls further behind. Costs keep rising. And the next Legislature gets stuck with the political equivalent of a junker with no brakes.

This Isn’t a Left or Right Problem. It’s a Forward Problem.

And before you say out loud, “Just get rid of those lousy, greedy politicians,” know this: you could fire every Democrat and replace them with Republicans, or vice versa, and we’d still be in this mess. Because the system isn’t broken from partisanship. It’s broken from inertia.

We made long-term promises. Then we tried to pay for them with short-term fixes. We borrowed against tomorrow’s income, then failed to generate that income.

And now we’re here. With a transportation system that can’t maintain itself. With debt we can barely service. With bridges and culverts waiting for a funding stream that may never come.

We don’t need slogans. We need solutions.

We need independent oversight before the first shovel hits dirt. We need real-time cost transparency. We need to firewall maintenance dollars and hold ourselves accountable when budgets go sideways.

We Can Still Get This Right

The six-cent tax won’t fix everything. But it might stop things from getting worse. It might keep the crews on the road, the paint on the lines, and the promises from unraveling further.

And honestly, that’s not a bad place to start.

Because this isn’t just a government problem. It’s not just a “Salem thing.” It’s an Oregon thing. It’s about whether we’re willing to face the truth about what it costs to have safe roads, working bridges, and a transportation system that doesn’t collapse every time the budget gets tight.

It’s about whether we still believe in fixing what’s broken, not just complaining about it.

We’ve solved harder problems. We’ve bounced back from worse.

So if you’re frustrated, you’re not wrong. But don’t give up. Keep paying attention. Ask questions. Expect more. And when someone tells you this system is fine as-is, tell them to take the scenic route through Oregon, and reality.

Because Oregon is worth the repair.